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March 4, 2011

And the downside is...?

Here is an interesting article on a recently released study on.....go ahead guess....give up? OK I'll tell you, the study is on ....climate change/global warming. Surprised you didn't I?

Anyway, what is interesting is that they try real hard to make this sound bad, but for the life of me I can't see how it is. Unfortunately the whole study is really nothing more than a CYBER WAG, (computer derived Wild Ass Guess) so it probably won't amount to anything real. But it does show that the whole global warming narrative which portrays only negative affects in order to drown the human race in a guilt trip, is hard to maintain as more and more scientist feed off it. Eventually scientist will have to admit than at least some good would come from a warming world. This study points this out.

Before I get into the article let me remind people that the science of global warming as put out by the IPCC claims that the globe will not warm uniformly. It will warm more in the northern latitudes and less as you get nearer the Equator, so this study fits right in with the projections. Of course since the study itself is based solely on the same model output that projects the warming, how could it project anything else?

Which gets us to the article "The greening of the North: climate change shrinking tundra, says study". Just reading the headline made me think, "Wow that's not so bad" and the more I read, the better the CYBER WAG future looks:
(By the way any misspelling in the article is theirs.)

Forecasting profound changes to all Arctic ecosystems "fuelled by human-induced global warming," the U.S.-led team of scientists has mapped the expected vanishing of moss- and lichen-covered land across much of the Canadian North, where up to 44 per cent of the terrain now classified as tundra could be replaced by invading boreal forest or shrub environments by 2099.

So if the models are correct the wide open tundras will soon be covered by forest, carbon dioxide ingesting forests?

Now I don't know about you but the trade-off does not seem all that bad.

Which brings up an interesting thought, will these advancing green monsters be able to keep up with mankind's insatiable appetite for demon fossil fuels? In fact have the wizards of modeling projections factored in these new marauding forest into any of their scenarios of doom and gloom?

Let's see what else this article has to offer in the way of our cyber future:

... huge stretches of tundra throughout mainland Canada, in Alaska and across Russia would disappear, the researchers' climate-change models indicate.

Nunavut and the Northwest Territories would see the bulk of the transition toward forest or shrub-covered lands, but the Yukon, Quebec's Ungava Peninsula and Labrador would also witness significant change.

"Imagine the vast, empty tundra in Alaska and Canada giving way to trees, shrubs and plants typical of more southerly climates," says a summary of the study published by scientists from the University of Nebraska, the Korean Polar Research Institute and Seoul National University. "Imagine similar changes in large parts of Eastern Europe, northern Asia and Scandinavia, as needle-leaf and broadleaf forests push northward into areas once unable to support them."

Yes just imagine. All those countless square miles of barren tundra overrun with vast invasive green forests filled with creatures bent on...uh...life.

Will planet Earth tolerate such an affront to it's territorial rights?

But it is even worse, as the article tries mightily to point out. What about the current residence of the barren tundra? :

Study leader Song Feng, a University of Nebraska climatologist, told Postmedia News that the iconic caribou — also known as reindeer, and featured on Canada's 25-cent coin — would be among the wildlife species affected by the changes.

"Increasing growth of trees may encroach on the habitat for many birds, reindeer and other locally beneficial species . . . thus adversely affecting local residents," she said.

I assume by residents they are referring to the animal as opposed to human variety. However as to the humans I suspect they will become forest trail guides or maybe go into logging? As to the animals perhaps they will adapt (evolve)? Or as the article points out, there will be new tundra that they might somehow find (migrate to) or perhaps some friendly environmentalist can relocate these poor creatures to the new habitats. (emphasis mine)

The team's study, published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Climate Dynamics, concludes that tundra landscapes — characterized by deep permafrost, mossy ground cover and little other vegetation — will persist throughout Canada's High Arctic islands and even expand in Greenland as its mammoth ice sheet retreats.

Ah those mammoth retreating ice sheets, which will be replaced by tundra which will be replaced by Yellowstone National Park, what a shame. I guess all those folks being flooded out of coastal areas by the melting mammoth ice sheets could move to the former inhabitable tundra and become forest rangers. What else do we have here;

"The projected warming leads to large shifts in climate regimes in the Arctic regions," the Climate Dynamics paper concludes. "The areas occupied by polar climate types and subarctic continental climate type are projected to steadily decline, while the areas covered by temperate and boreal oceanic climate types are expected to steadily expand."

Yes we certainly do not want Arctic and subarctic regions to become temperate, what will the Polar Bears do? Perhaps we can make a colony for them with the reindeer in Greenland.

What is not mentioned in this article is that if the Cyber WAG's are correct, then areas just to the south of these dreaded expanded forests will become